Simply Sugar – An Explanation Of Sweeteners – Part 1

Ahhh sweeteners, everyone loves them, and they try to find a way to get them into their diet whether or not their diet actually “allows” them to do it.

And even if you don’t have a specific diet, maybe you just heard you’re supposed to avoid the all evil High Fructose Corn Syrup. Oh no! The horror!

Don’t eat that crazy HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) stuff, or else you know what will happen!

Or do you?

Really, think about it, why don’t you like HFCS?

Why do you think it’s bad for you?

Maybe you’ve just heard it over and over again, about how it’s a synthesized, and quazi-artificial sweetener that just does all sorts of bad things to you.

But again… what types of bad things? Do you even know?

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t like HFCS and I avoid it as much as I possibly can. But if you’re going to avoid something you’d better know why you’re avoiding it.

Because if you don’t know why you’re avoiding HFCS then that comes with some serious danger. And I’ll get into that in a second.

First, let’s explain the simple structure of sugar.

Almost all sugars, including HFCS, table sugar, and even honey are made of two types of sugar.

I hope you like my drawings, I spent a few seconds on each. SO… take a good hard look at them. They’re very important, and have hidden messages in each…

1.)

2.)

Now which do you think is better?

I’ll give you two guesses.

Good job! I bet you got it right after at least two tries

But really, glucose is much better for you than fructose.

Why?

Because your muscles, organs, brain, and almost entire body really likes glucose and gets along with it really well. (Therefore the pretty hearts.)

So when you eat glucose, it goes from your stomach, to your muscles, and other organs, brain, etc.

Whatever is left over after your body uses what it can right away goes to your liver to store as sugar for later use.

And that’s good.

Here’s a map in case you get lost.

And then there’s fructose… Remember him?

Man, he’s angry huh?

And he’s out to get your liver! AND make you fat!

Here’s what Mr. Fructose man does.

He’s pretty mean, and your muscles, brain, organs, etc. are all really nice. So they don’t get along. They say “no way” to Mr. Fructose meany man. And they send him to where all the “mean” toxic substances are sent to in your body.

Where’s that?

You guessed it, your liver!

Yea, you’re liver takes junk from almost everyone, so you should be happy you have one.

Basically, fructose gets rejected by all of the things glucose gets along with. And it gets kicked to your liver almost instantly from your stomach.

Your liver has a pretty tough time making fructose into something your body can use, and in the process of breaking it down, it makes a bunch of “junk” proteins which can cause accelerated aging in your body.

When your liver breaks down fructose, it also turns about 33% of it into fat. Yes I said fat.

Specifically the *bad* kind of fat. It turns into triglycerides, and very low density LDL which is the really bad type of LDL and both triglycerides and very low density LDL contributes greatly to heart disease.

SO when you think you’re eating fructose, you’re really making bad fat instead of just eating “empty calories.”

In addition to this, the conversion of fructose to “useable” energy in your body creates insulin resistance and that’s really bad. And it’s a big pre-cursor to diabetes, and other bad things. (We’ll cover this in a later post.)

Fructose can also make it so your hormone leptin turns off, and when leptin turns off, you feel hungry almost all the time.

And again, in case you got lost… here’s a road map. You’d better be happy I made these for you. They tool a LOT of effort.

So how do you avoid fructose?

And what foods contain the most fructose?

Well… I’m a little tired right now, and this is a long post.

So I’m going to pick this back up in a future post.

Just remember.

If you are going to reach for a sweetener.

Glucose = good

Fructose = bad

See ya,

Sean